I have downloaded and burnt to CD V7 Std Live because I have seen and heard many good things about Vector. But I have not made much progress.

I have tried to boot 2 fairly old desktops with the CD. It seems to go through most of the boot up on both. But then on one I get a message about failure to configure Xterm and then just a blank screen. I was offered a look at the relevant log file but it meant nothing to me. On the other machine, I was just left with the blank screen.

Anyone else had this problem?

Is my CD corrupt in some way?

The machines are old - probably 10 years. I was hoping to extend their useful life with a small, fast OS like Vector. Is this too old? Would an older version of Vector be a better choice?

10 years old would put you in the Pentium 4 class, which is fine for Vector Linux. The amount of memory is more critical. For the LiveCD you should have 512M or better. For anything less you would do better with the standard install version.

Both of your machines should be capable of booting the LiveCD. The usual suspects in these cases are usually corrupted downloads or bad burns. Testing the disc on another machine involves little to no risk. It will not make any changes to the hard drives just by booting up.

I just got Vector 7 std-Gold running on a Compaq 5WV252 desktop I bought new in 2000. Not sure what my specs on this machine anymore. The motherboard is the only original part left to this little guy.I maxed the cpu out at about 1100 mhz. Up from a stock 750 mhz. Memory is up to 768 mbs RAM. Up from stock 64 mbs. This was a WinME machine when it was new. Now it dualboots WinXP SP3 with Vector 7 Gold.I couldn't get Vector 7 lite to install on here at all. The only other distro that worked, however buggy, was Antix 11. This computer used to run about any distro you wanted to load; but, lately, it's getting finicky. I don't know if it is going bad or if technology is passing it by.Good luck.